Tuesday, December 18, 2012

One Nova Scotian, One Vote

The Nova Scotia government is headed for a legal challenge over last week’s decision to stamp out minority ridings that aim to ensure Acadian and black representation in favour of population-based ridings, provoking discussion around whether ethnically based districting has any place in today’s political landscape — there or anywhere.

The ridings are believed to be the only such seats in Canada, but by abolishing them the provincial government would be only partway down the path toward shedding its special treatment of minorities in elections: According to a government spokesperson, the new boundaries will have no effect on the handful of school board seats reserved for Nova Scotia’s black, Acadian and First Nations populations.

I'm shocked that these ridings exist and even more shocked that an NDP government would abolish them. If that wasn't impressive enough the Premier, Darrell Dexter, has correctly argued that the votes of Nova Scotians should be weighed equally. Not sure if Mr Dexter is willing to take that logic to the federal level where his province, as with most of the Maritimes, is over represented in the House of Commons based on its population.

Unfortunately the province's school board system will still retain ethnically and racially reserved seats.

Reliably enough a Ryerson University professor was located to attack the proposal. In the prof's words equal representation will create a "false togetherness.” Real togetherness being defined as electoral representation based on skin colour or ethnic background. That's a head scratcher for most Canadians. Isn't treating people equally, as individuals, a way of bringing them together?

Among the professoriate individualism went out of fashion at about the same time as poodle skirts and tail fins on cars. This is why the aforementioned professor had no problem describing the Nova Scotian government's move toward equality as "retrograde." To the Left individualism is old fashioned and collectivism is cutting edge. This has it historically and conceptually backwards.

Most primitive societies in human history are tribalistic. Given the nature of life at such a low level of development a high-level of interdependency is required. A primitive tribe is something closer to a platoon living off the land behind enemies lines than a fully formed society. As societies become more sophisticated individual talents and energies need to be allowed to express themselves. Those societies where the individual has been allowed the greatest leeway, the English speaking nations, have thrived and excelled over the rest of the world.

This, more than anything else, is why English is the world's lingua franca.

A century ago British and American explorers and imperialists would report back on the superstitious and highly collectivist nature of obscure and remote tribes. This was done, in part, to show how much civilized man had progressed. From about the First World War onward, roughly the moment the West began to lose self confidence, reports about these obscure tribes went from pitying to admiring. The whole intellectual machinery of the West went into reverse. Having risen above tribalism we now marched back to it.

Your sense of identity was not a set of values taught to you from childhood, values which as a person grew older they would accept or reject. Instead identity was in the blood. Where previously such racially based collectivism was dismissed as the prejudice of the ignorant and malicious, in time it became quite respectable. This is why a Canadian university professor can advocate for a system of racial and ethnic based electoral preference and not be called a bigot. His bigotry is far more fashionable than the bigotry of Archie Bunker. It is, however, far more dangerous.

People laughed at Archie Bunker. No one is laughing at this university professor.

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Last week, that same "sensible" government bought Bowater's private forest land for $110,000,000 that it doesn't have. The province already owns a third of its forests. It also bailed out the union pensioners of a failed Pulp Mill. The NS government may be against coloured gerrymandering but likes Green and Red in other matters. One step forward and two in reverse.